Happy Birfday, Alex Tourk
If Alex Tourk had a MySpace page, he would have moved Gavin from the #1 spot on his Top 8 after he heard about the affair, and deleted Gavin as a friend. So Gavin trying to be nice on Alex's birthday was like Gavin trying to re-friend Alex, and being denied. Gavin's gonna rot in Alex's hypothetical friend request box for all of eternity because they aren't even RealSpace friends anymore.
Alex was going to announce his future plans on Wednesday, but Gavin had go steal his thunder. Again. We didn't know what Alex was going to say before that, and now we really don't know. That would have been, like, news. Thanks a lot, Gavin!
Name-dropping isn't our thing (unless it's our name that's being dropped, duh), but we interviewed Alex back when we were a bright-eyed, pixie-haired intern at 7x7. The interview was for the Hot 20 Under 40 issue. We can remember being clueless as to who Alex was before the interview, only that he worked for Gavin and was really important.
Image replaced to avoid hotlinking. Photo of Tina Turner's cat courtesy of the Institute for Private Dancing Studies.
When we called his office, Alex's assistant informed us that he was nervous about the upcoming profile and all the hype surrounding the Hot 20 issue. (This made us feel better, because we were really nervous, too.) Anyway, the interview went swimmingly, and we saw Alex at a couple parties after that and he was always nice to us.
Among the things we talked about: Alex's proudest accomplishment was Project Homeless Connect, now called San Francisco Connect. He was a couple weeks away from stepping down as deputy chief of staff to become Gavin's campaign manager, and he was excited about the upcoming election. When I asked about the downside of his job, he said it was the time it took away from his family.
If Alex was nervous about a short interview then, we can only imagine that the current onslaught of media attention regarding the sex scandal is nothing short of a nightmare. He didn't go into politics to become a public figure, but he is now. Unfortunately, all the work he put into Project Homeless Connect, and the Newsom campaign got overshadowed by TourkGate.
We at SFist wish Alex Tourk a Happy Belated Birthday. Keep it gangsta.